It's a Fact!

In nature, predators usually go after the weakest of the prey – the oldest or youngest, the injured or ill. It makes sense; these animals are easier to catch, even if they’re not always the meatiest. This ensures that wildlife populations stay strong, as the weakest animals get culled while the strongest and healthiest survive to pass on their genes.

We humans are different. We’re often out to prove something, and so, with our fancy hunting or fishing gear, we go after the biggest and strongest animals.

Hunting and harvesting done by humans has the opposite effect. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that many of our current hunting and fishing practices not only reduce population numbers but also cause dramatic and often negative changes in the behaviour, size, and characteristics of targeted species.

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Only 10 percent of all large fish—both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large groundfish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder—are left in the sea, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature.

"From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean. There is no blue frontier left," said lead author Ransom Myers, a fisheries biologist based at Dalhousie University in Canada. "Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent—not just in some areas, not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the poles."